So, my suggestion for a history forum has been accepted. Woo-hoo! Now, what my goal is, is to have a place where we can discuss not only the history of comics, but how they relate to the events of history. I got the idea between epcomic's fact of the day thread, and while poking around on superdickery.com, particularly the propaganda section. I'll be starting up a few threads to get things rolling.

Actually, JR, you were supposed to start "up a few threads to get things rolling". We have all been waiting for you to layout a framework for these discussions, and how you would like your thread run. So you're Marvel fan-boy excuse has no merit.

I'm the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn't very nice.

Not sure if any one is interested but I read a great book about comics in the 40's 50's and 60's and the struggles they faced. It is called "The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America" by David Hadju. It was a real eye opener to read about the crap that went on and struggles of the comic book industry. It also made me angry to know that they had organized comic book burnings.

Not sure if any one is interested but I read a great book about comics in the 40's 50's and 60's and the struggles they faced. It is called "The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America" by David Hadju. It was a real eye opener to read about the crap that went on and struggles of the comic book industry. It also made me angry to know that they had organized comic book burnings.

I think that it would be a good idea to focus on a particular era in comics and go from there. I have been doing some research on comics, particularly the Bronze Age comics and found that the bronze age had a lot of shift in themes, particularly recent issues of the times, including drug use, feminism, and even racism.

I have a website that describes the bronze age at Bronze Age Comics to see more info. Please visit and feel free to blog. I also have a free comic book giveaway you can sign up for, if you visit and blog.

If you are talking the political history of comics, it begins with Fredric Wertham. Hendrikson and Kevaur really wanted these indictments of the comic industry to be on a par with the communist hearings of the time.

My own personal belief is that the new comic code resulted in un-intellectual comics for quite a while, however they ended up creating a wave of creativity we have not seen in quite a while.

Eventually, in the late 60's and early 70's, in order to tell better stories, both Marvel and DC bucked the CCA for a while.

For me, the early 70s, say about 71ish-75ish is my favorite era of comic books.

Storywise; there was just so much influence going on in them. Vietnam(post-vietnam), Watergate, Cold War, post-hippyism, ealry phase disco, cheesey TV shows, sexual revolution, rise of advaenture fantasy (Conan (though originally from the 30s), Gor, type books and sci-fi were really taking hold in a big way), it allowed for some pretty nifty story-telling.

I liked the art, in that it was still somewhat simplistic, it was still narrative. It was art that told a sequence of events. Today's comic art is awesome art.....but in my humble old guy opinion, it doesn't have the same narrative quality as the old panels.

So all in all those early 70s stories showed some of breaking of the prior naivete (probably spelled wrong), but still had narrative art.

Poliitically, I think you have to "Blame Canada" for the censorship in U.S. comics. It started in the late '40s, when two boys were playing with a rifle and shot a driver in northern BC. It was found out that these two teens read comic books. There was a whole debate about it in the provincial legislature and that went to the federal parliament. Frederick Wertham wrote about all this in a chapter in SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT.

The upshot of it was that Canada passed laws against certain comics and imposed censorship on others. Some American comics couldn't get across the border because they were considered too violent.

Looking at what Canada had done, people like Wertham in the U.S. thought this was a good idea and started to campaign for similar restrictions.

Mind you--long before there was a Comics Code--every publisher had their own in-house code on what was acceptable and what was not. Some publishers were very strict and others were not.

I think the Comics Code has become a bit of a scapegoat. it was a voluntary system and not every publisher abided by it. It was imposed by the publishers because the publishers were afraid of the government and of citizens' groups, that were a threat to the whole industry. We tend to think that the Comic Code forced these changes on comics--and bemoan the fact that they destroyed some great publishers. But it was really the American people--mothers and fathers and teachers and community leaders--who did this to comics. So they should get the blame.

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